Career Advancements and Shifts in the Talent Market with Glasshouse Systems' Alex Talmor

Tune in as Leon chats with Alex Talmor, the President of the Canadian Operations at GlassHouse Systems, a North American company that provides IT infrastructure, security, cloud, and managed services for large corporations and governments. 

Starting as a sales executive, Alex rose in the ranks, becoming President in 2022. He offers key insights into career advancements within organizations and provides observations regarding recruiting talent in both small and large organizations. He also shares with us reflections on working while having a young family and favourite travel destination.

If you’re interested in our Snippets podcasts or The Way Forward live webcasts, please take a moment and visit us at peo-leadership.com. Guests have included Morgan Housel, Professor Janice Stein, Michael Beer, Rob Chesnut, Dr. Jason Selk, and Mitchell Goldhar.  We’ve covered such topics as growth, uncertainty, mental health, leadership, the new world, and a host of others. 

If you’d like to learn more about our leadership community, please feel free to contact lgoren@peo-leadership.com. 

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Transcript

Special thanks to Horn for helping bring us today’s PEO Snippets podcast. Welcome to our Snippets podcast. I'm Leon Goren, CEO and president of PEO Leadership, North America's premier peer-to-peer network and leadership advisory firm. Today, I'm very excited to welcome Alex Talmor, the President of the Canadian Operations at GlassHouse Systems, a North American company that provides IT infrastructure, security, cloud, and managed services for large corporations and governments, and is a trusted partner in IBM's ecosystem.

Alex joined GlassHouse Systems back in October 2009 as a sales executive and rose in the ranks, becoming President in 2022. Today, the company has grown to over 100 employees during his tenure. He's a new addition to our PEO leadership community and is already making his mark. Alex, it's great to have you with us today.

Thank you, Leon. It's great to be here.

So maybe we can start off a little bit with telling us, you know, I rambled off what GlassHouse is about, but I'd rather hear it from you, the president. What, what are the primary services that you guys offer? So,  GlassHouse was started as a more focused on the infrastructure side, the enterprise infrastructure, and really made a transformation, I would say, probably about seven, eight years ago, we started to do more and more services, so services in the cyberspace, so the design, deploy, then manage customers security environments  and also intermediate services of the IT infrastructure, it was Predominantly on premises, but as they move to the cloud, then we're now also managing customer environments, wherever it is, which is on premises or the cloud, across North America.

What's the ideal client, you say government and also on the private side, but I'm thinking about our members. In terms of the ideal client size, are they very large clients that your government's huge, but in terms of the private side, Canadian wise, I would say it's mostly mid to enterprise, enterprise, large ones, Canadian, but in the U S it's more medium size.

You know, that gives us a sort of a bit of an overview. So I was going to ask you 14 years with the business, by the way, you have an interesting background. And I know you mentioned to me this, you did your MBA when you're 40 years old. We usually don't see a 40 year old doing their MBA other than in the executive side, but you jumped in with two feet and did it right in there to get it done.

So that's, congratulations on that. I felt  like I had already my master's in engineering. So I had my bachelor in science and master's in engineering and industrial engineering. But, being in Canada since 2004, I felt is the right thing to do in order to get more acquainted, in terminology, get more business aspects to it, network more.

And that's what's the key for me. I think that's what it took me. Close to four years to complete the MBA. It was a part time, I couldn't take time off work, so it was a part time, journey. It was worth it. Working, three kids, and an MBA. All right, go get her. The other thing I noticed also is Technion University, that's where you did your undergrad, right?

That was in Israel. Today you're on the board actually, on the Canadian, what's that all about? So it's the Technion, which is, I don't know, I've been called the MIT of the Middle East. I'm so proud of being part of it. So when the, the, I joined as a volunteer in the association here three years ago, and then I was asked to join as a board member.

And really the Technion Association here in Canada is about to promote the, the Technion in Israel promote collaboration, that is done in Canada. And of course, collect funds to be able to help in research and other activities in the, of the tech. Coming back as you sort of 14 years coming in as a sales executive, you end up as the president.

We have members that are CEOs presence, but we have a lot of members that are senior leaders sort of aspiring to sort of move up. Are there any words of wisdoms or things that you've learned during that track? That you could share with the group in terms of how you moved up within the organization, because sometimes you see these leaders, they jump from organization to organization to move up the ladder quick.

So, in your world, what were some of the things that you did to sort of help yourself move up? And what do you like to hear the people below you today? It's probably the same expectations you're setting of them. In terms of moving up the ladder, I think it's the really thinking outside of your swim lane.

I was in sales, right? So, um, whenever there was any technical or project that has been worked on with other groups departments, I wasn't kind of throwing the ball and waiting. I think some of the things that really helped me is really working with them to resolve any challenges or projects, things like that.

So I was always kind of cross. Between, you know, with HR, with finance, with technical. So it's really out there working with everyone, even things that are outside of my realm. And was that the culture of the organization to allow you to do that? Cause some leaders will say, well, I have to get my job done.

I don't really have the time to sort of sit there and help others. If it doesn't fall within my own role and responsibilities. I think in some of the culture, yeah, because the founder of GlassHouse Systems, David Antebi, that has passed away a couple of years ago. It was one that promoted, you know, if you have an idea, come, let's do it.

And it was a smaller organization when it was 30, when I joined it was 32, slowly grew and it was welcomed, accepted. And that's probably a combination of that I was fortunate enough with being in such an organization that I was trusted with to make things. So the 32, and I know I didn't ask you this before, but there were 32 when you first joined, there's over a hundred today.

Of the 32 that were with you before, are there many of them still there that have sort of grown as well with you? I would say over half, at least. Wow. Some of them retired, but a few from the sales team are still there. And some of the technical, so even a couple from finance was still there. So you came out of the IBM world.

So you, you've worked for a multinational. Now you sell into the multinationals in the sense IBM's helping you on that side. And now you work for a family owned business. And so for someone looking inside or wanted to compare the two, and I laugh at a lot of my members, they always think the grass is greener on the other side, but what are the real differences?

Like, could you, the pluses and minuses. And you don't have to get too elaborate on it, maybe at the very high end. I, I think the real difference is in large organization, there's a lot of internal work facing in that needs to be done and leaves you a little, very little time really work. In my, when I was at IBM, I was already also in sales to work outside with customers.

And you really. There's a very specific domain or territory or things that you can sell to specific set of customers that you're going to work with, and there's lots of limitations within a large corporations based on the policies, the governance and risk averse. And the smaller one, you can make the impact.

You think you can do something, then go and do that. It's really room for being proactive, innovative, more, and see the results quickly. You make an impact right away. Without your questions, you won't see the difference as quick. In your environment, on the recruiting side, do you find it harder to get more towned in a smaller organization versus a multinational today?

When you're, are you competing? I am. We are competing. Yes. We are competing the it's not, our name is not the name as IBM and HP and others. Right. So, um, but I think based on the name, it already started to create in the ecosystem in it. I think we very much. It's sought after, but it is competitive just in the talent market.

Alex, has it changed or shifted? Like, if we were talking about a year and a half ago, there seemed to be the talent was really hard to find today. It seems like it's really eased off a lot and. There's a lot of people outside, like, looking for jobs versus. Being able to demand, you know, choose whatever they wanted.

Have you noticed that as well? We started to notice that as well, because, I think what happened during COVID and 2021, 2022, there was a lot of hires and pay a significant premiums, many companies, and you start to see kind of them a bit shrinking and making more cost adjustments. So you start to get good pool of talent out there that you can start, easier to get to.

That's saying it's, it's crazy. It's not, but it's, it's a, there's a shift. Definitely. There's a shift in the market as we slowly start to wrap this up. I also know you're a big traveler, so you travel all around the world. Latest vacation was Costa Rica, Costa Rica. So out of all the places you've traveled, how does Costa Rica rank?

Like you have to give me your top three destinations. What would they be with the family? And you got a young family. Yeah. So I loved being in Greece. Cause I came from, the Middle East and the Mediterranean culture, I love it and the sea and so on. And also the food, amazing. Costa Rica was a very active type of vacation.

We've been to all inclusives, but we decided this time we're going to do something that is everyone. We went all the five of us, with the three kids, kids, one of them is 26, so going into an active type of vacation, a great experience for us for one week, that's all we needed. It's a great experience.

Third one, I would say definitely, I was in Slovenia and Croatia. Terrific place as well. I haven't been to Slovenia. Croatia is unbelievable. So Slovenia is not that different in terms of nature and landscape, but it's terrific. Lots more to Alex. Not just GlassHouse Tour Guide, international Tour Guide,

Alex, thanks so much for joining us and sharing some of those insights with us, and welcome to the PEO Leadership community. If there's members listening, I know you can reach Alex, reach out to him. You can ask him lots of different questions in the business that he's in or something related to his travels.

If you're interested in our live webcast, the Way Forward Live and or any other Snippets, please take a moment and visit us at peo-leadership.com. You'll find on our site various previous recorded webcasts, which include guests such as Morgan Housel, Professor Janice Stein, Michael Beer, Rob Chesnut, Dr. Jason Selk, Mitchell Goldhar.

The list goes on as we cover such topics as mental health, leadership, the new world, and a host of others. Thank you very much for joining us today, and we look forward to seeing you again shortly. All the best.